Movie review: Bethlehem spotlights tangled loyalties in Middle East

Tsahi Halevi, left, and Shadi Mar'i in Bethlehem.

Photograph by: Mongrel Media
, Postmedia News

Bethlehem

When high-concept coincidence hits Hollywood, the big studios make competing movies about comets about to hit the Earth or volcanoes erupting. In the Middle East — an even more dangerous place than Hollywood — they double up on films about teenage Palestinian informants risking their lives for shadowy Israeli spy chiefs.

That was the plot of Omar, a Palestinian film about a boy in love with a girl from the other side of the security fence in Nazareth, and how he is tortured into becoming a snitch for Israeli intelligence. The Israeli film Bethlehem has a more subtle kind of treachery: a Palestinian teenager recruited at the age of 15 and treated like a son by his Israeli handler, even as he is trained to betray the cause of his own family and friends.

Directed and co-written by Yuval Adler — a former philosophy student making his first movie — Bethlehem negotiates a tangle of loyalties that’s as complex as the Middle East itself. Even the title evokes the hopeless complications: It’s reminiscent of Chinatown, the 1974 Roman Polanski movie whose name has become a symbol of impenetrable tragedy. Forget it, Jake. It’s Bethlehem.

The movie stars newcomer Shadi Mar’i as Sanfur (his name is Arabic for “Smurf”), a young boy from a family of radicals: His brother, Ibrahim, is a famous terrorist — or freedom fighter, depending which side of the security fence you’re on — who works for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. There are hints, however, that Ibrahim also works for the rival group Hamas, which is regarded as another sort of betrayal by the local community of rock-throwers. (The Palestinian

Authority, the official controllers of the area, is depicted as a group of politicians mostly interested in collecting international money — Belgium has just donated some funds to study the issue of women — and handing it out as favours.)

While Sanfur is close to the inner circle of terrorism, he is actually working for Razi (Tsahi Halevi), an Israeli agent who spends so much time with the boy that he has practically adopted him. As the film opens, someone is setting off a deadly suicide bomb in Israeli and Razi wants Sanfur to lead him to his brother. At the same time, he is worried about Sanfur’s safety and is willing to lie to his bosses to protect his young protégé.

It’s a dangerous game, and Adler tells it swiftly, racing through the various armed gangs — just about everyone in the movie has a weapon — and leaving us to pick up the trail of commitments. He gets fine, authentic performances from his stars (Mar’i is an untrained actor, like the stars of Omar, with a natural charisma), and a fierce turn from Hitham Omari as Badawi, a leader of the martyrs’ brigades who must protect his cause even as he plots murder.

It’s a story told mostly in hints and feints: Bethlehem doesn’t delve into the root causes of the turmoil, or try to explain or forgive either side. The enmities run deep. In the film’s central scene, a terrorist is trapped in a house by soldiers who are being attacked by a Palestinian mob. The owner of the house is an innocent bystander, but he won’t tell where the fugitive is hiding, so suddenly he isn’t so innocent anymore. In Bethlehem, everyone is guilty of something.

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